


Candy Perfume Girl

by Missy



Category: Daria (Cartoon)
Genre: Fashion & Couture, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-01
Updated: 2013-10-01
Packaged: 2017-12-28 03:25:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/987094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘You don’t know how I sacrifice/how I pay the price/to look this nice.” – Cyndi Lauper, It’s Hard to Be Me</p>
            </blockquote>





	Candy Perfume Girl

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Ladies' Bingo: Prompt: Beauty.

She counts the number of strokes her brush makes sliding through the cute tangles making a nest at the crown of her head. It’s never less than a hundred; if she takes a smaller number the entire thing turns into a painful, knotty mess and Tiffany forces her to sit on the aisle during lunch. And Quinn didn’t survive the first fourteen years of her life laboring under the weight of being Daria Morgendorfer’s sister for nothing.

That’s why her baths take an obscenely long amount of time; she has to shrink down her pores while hydrating her skin, though sometimes she’s too oily and needs to use a sugar scrub, followed by a tomato toner. “Don’t stand too close to the oven,” Daria wryly suggests as Quinn hunches over the sink, exfoliating her winter-dried hands. But Daria’s never given herself over to the primal rituals of priming and concealing, even when there wasn’t anything that actually needed to be covered up.

That’s why she owns five shades of pink lipstick. According to Daria one tube is enough for five braindead fashionistas, but each shade has been carefully coordinated to a time of day and specific Joey. There’s geometry pink, composition pink, biology pink, and study hall pink, each a complex and multifaceted shade quite similar to but incredibly different from the interior of a rose. Each requires a certain kind of hair clip and the right purse; a geometry purse worn with study hall lips counted as an unmitigated fashion disaster, and the last thing she wanted to do was attract Sandy’s ire.

Her perfume must be alluring without wafting obnoxiously through the classroom; that means putting it through a rigorous, meticulous testing process down at the mall. It has to balance floral and amber notes perfectly, with the very slightest hint of fruit, because fruit notes give Sandy a headache. This requires a huddle between Stacy and Quinn; do I smell good? Did I pass the test?

The outfit has to be precisely tailored and spotlessly clean, too. An awkward seam or an off-brand teeshirt meant certain social exile; so did sporting cheap sneakers. If that meant hitching a ride with Daria’s weird friend to the outlet mall, where she could get in-season sandals and Reeboks at a greatly reduced price, then so be it. There were extreme sacrifices to be made in the name of fashion – and the biggest Quinn had made so far was riding around in the back of a half-broken-down van that smelled like funny weed just to buy a quarter-priced Ralph Lauren teeshirt. But it was worth the strife and drama just to know she’d done the Fashion Club right.

Outfit coordination obsesses her heart. She can’t wear blue if Tiffany’s wearing black, and she can’t wear yellow if Stacy’s wearing white. And, of course, nobody can wear black because it makes Sandy look fat.

The fashion game is no joke to Quinn. Even her underwear has to be cute, or she will suffer the consequences.

Thus goes life as a fashionista. But to the cutest go the spoils, and Quinn was happy to reap every pink glitter-spackled benefit.

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfiction uses characters from **Daria** , all of whom are the property of **MTV Productions**. No money was gained from the writing of this fanfiction and all are used under the strictures of of the Berne Convention.


End file.
